Homunculus lsi-2

by James P. Blaylock

  Gaslamps were lit and the window was pulled shut and bolted. On the floor lay the spyglass, the sextant, and two bits of oak plank. The Captain leaned into the chest, hauled out the pig and the sabers, and realized almost at once that the emerald box was gone. He slammed down the lid, threw the window open once again, and leaned out into the alley in a wash of rain. There was nothing to see in either direction when lightning obliged him by brightening the otherwise dark night. He turned to his companions, dripping rain from his beard, and gestured helplessly.

  “Something stolen?” asked St. Ives, a rhetorical question, given the debris on the floor and the open window.

  “Aye,” gasped the Captain, reeling toward a chair. But he hadn’t sat for more than a few seconds before he was up and through the door, bursting into Kraken’s empty room with a shout. Silence met him.

  “Kraken gone!” cried St. Ives.

  “The scoundrel!” shouted the Captain.

  “Perhaps,” said Godall passionlessly, “Kraken himself has been the victim of this thief. Let’s not leap to conclusions.”

  “Of course,” said St. Ives. “I’d bet on the man with the chimney pipe hat here — the one who was after the plans to the engine. I ran afoul of him myself recently. I’d bet he’s sneaked in through the casement, robbed the Captain’s sea chest, and done Kraken a mischief while Drake waylaid us in the shop; that’s the ticket.” St. Ives stroked his chin, squinting at nothing. “But why should this man necessarily be in league with Drake?” He addressed the question to no one, but Godall answered.

  “Drake owns the house in Wardour Street — one among many. Your disguise, by the way, was a bit on the transparent side. It was me that you bumped into after you’d got hold of the clock.”

  The captain interrupted the exchange by raging back into the room waving the almost empty whisky bottle that he’d found under Kraken’s bed. “This is all stuff!” he cried. “The man’s made off with… with my property, and no mistake. There was no man in a hat — not here anyway, kidnapping and robbing and clattering about under our noses. No, sir. Kraken’s made away with the goods, and there’s no use making up tales.”

  “What goods?” asked St. Ives innocently. “Perhaps we can recover them.”

  The Captain fell silent and collapsed into an armchair, precipitating a little cloud of dust. He buried his face in his hands, his anger apparently having fled in the face of St. Ives’ question. The Captain looked up at his congregated friends, started to speak, glanced at Jack, and shook his head. “Leave me to think,” he said simply, and slouched deeper into his chair, suddenly tired and old, his face lined with a hundred thousand sea miles and the weather of countless storms and suns.

  Thunder rattled the casement, and the party gathered coats and hats and silently made ready to bend out into the road, awash now with the downpour. Jack and Keeble had only to cross Jermyn Street to shelter, but St. Ives and Godall had a longer journey. The muffled chiming of a clock could be heard through the pelting rain — two doleful peals that announced, more than anything else, the certainty that hansom cabs would long since have ceased to run, and that the walk, for St. Ives at least, would be a long and sodden one. The Bohemian Cigar Divan lay some half mile to the northeast, and the Bertasso in Pimlico some three miles to the southeast, but for six blocks or so, Godall and St. Ives walked together down Jermyn toward Haymarket. Neither was satisfied with the half-finished meeting. Things were hotting up at such a rate that action of some sort seemed to be called for. Biweekly meetings over cigars and ale would avail them little.

  St. Ives knew almost nothing of Godall, who was a friend, after all, of Captain Powers, and a fairly recent friend at that. But he was very apparently enmeshed in the Narbondo-Drake business, for reasons St. Ives couldn’t entirely fathom. Why, in fact, was Captain Powers so thoroughly caught up? Why had Narbondo been seen lurking outside the smoke shop, if indeed he had? Mightn’t he as easily have been watching Keeble’s house, on the advice, possibly, of Kelso Drake? It was a muddle. St. Ives longed to be back in Harrogate, in among his scientific apparatus, consulting the staid and learned Hasbro, losing himself in matters of physics and astronomy. He could almost smell the steel chips and hot oil of the workshop of Peter Hall, the little Dorchester blacksmith who constructed the shell of the riveted spacecraft. There were too damned many distractions in London, all of them chattering for attention.

  Just that afternoon had come a note from the Royal Academy. On the strength of his knowledge of Birdlip and his friendship with the uncommunicative William Keeble, St. Ives was invited to participate in certain programs involving the study of Birdlip’s amazing craft, which had been sighted over the Denmark Strait far up into the thin air of the stratosphere, swinging toward Iceland on a course that would sweep it once again over Greater London. Balloon expeditions were being readied in Reykjavik. There was some reason to suppose that the blimp would ultimately descend, perhaps land, in the following weeks. It might — who could say? — simply fall onto London rooftops like a spent balloon. The professor’s particular knowledge might be useful. And didn’t he know the toymaker William Keeble? Couldn’t he, perhaps, use his influence… Coercion is what it was. Here was an offer. St. Ives was to drop his work, lock the doors of his laboratory, send Hasbro to Scarborough on holiday. And in exchange, the Royal Academy would blink the ignorance and scientific prejudice out of their eyes, clean their spectacles, and agree to consider him something more than a lunatic eccentric. Why couldn’t a man just go about his work? Why must he always be meddled with? Who were all these people and what legitimate claim had they on his time? None whatsoever. The answer was clear as Whitefriar’s crystal, and yet hardly a day went by but what some new mystery, some complaint, some request arrived by post, some odd man in a chimney pipe hat peered in the window at you, or some long lost Kraken appeared from an alley and stole an unidentifiable trifle from a friend on the most rainy, miserable night imaginable — a night that had no business showing its face in the spring, for God’s sake.

  Water ran from the brim of his felt hat like a beaded curtain and soaked his overcoat until it hung heavy as chain mail. And just when it seemed that the rain was letting up and the shadows of recessed doorways in the houses across the street began to solidify out of the mists, there was a bang and a crash as lightning lit the rooftops and ripped to bits whatever forces had attempted to subdue the weather. Wind tore along the street, whipping the tails of St. Ives’ coat and sending a chill through him that anticipated a lancing deluge from the starless heavens. The two men bounded as one into the doorway of a dark house where the wind and wet, at least, were powerless to follow.

  “Deadly night,” said St. Ives blackly.

  “Mmm,” responded his companion.

  “What do you suppose Kraken stole?” asked St. Ives. “Not that it’s my business entirely — although I have a sneaking suspicion it will become so. It’s just that the Captain seemed so peculiarly… devastated by it. It’s a side of him I hadn’t seen.”

  Godall lit his pipe in silence, his tobacco, pipe, and equipment miraculously dry. St. Ives didn’t bother to look at his own. Some day soon — after the successful launching of the starship — he’d set about developing a method to maintain the suitability of his smoking apparatus in even the most hellish weather. There would then be one thing in his life that was a certainty, a constant, that the forces of weather and chaos couldn’t make a hash of.

  “I’m not at all sure how you’ve managed to keep your tobacco and matches dry,” said St. Ives, “but my own are muck.”

  “Here, my good fellow,” responded Godall graciously, offering his open pouch. “Thank the Captain. It’s his blend. Superior to any of my own, too.” The two men passed matches and tampers back and forth, speaking in low tones and watching the rain roar down in an undulating, opaque curtain, looking for all the world as if the gods were shaking out a cosmic sheet in the roadway.

  “I’m not certain about the theft,” said Godall,
when St. Ives’ pipe was alight. “But you’ve struck it, I believe, when you said it would become our business soon enough. The next few days should clarify things a bit, though I suppose the clarification will only serve to deepen the mystery.” Godall paused for a moment, contemplating, then said: “Those men at The Blood Pudding. They were dead men; I’m certain of it. And your reading Owlesby’s narrative tonight is what makes me so certain. What do you think, as a man of science? Could Owlesby animate corpses?”

  “If Sebastian said he could, he could,” said St. Ives simply. “How he did it I’m not certain, but it involved enormous carp, somehow. And the homunculus, the thing in the box, wasn’t required. It’s apparent from the manuscript that Owlesby thought the creature would reveal the secret of perpetual life to him. Keeble thought so too. What Keeble did, or attempted to do with engines — that’s what Owlesby would accomplish with human beings. That’s partly the explanation of poor Keeble’s decline — forgive me for speaking in such terms of a friend. But damn me, this business has been ruinous. Keeble blames himself, I think, for having put Owlesby onto the creature in the first place, for having filled Owlesby with notions of overcoming inertia.”

  “And so his caring for Jack these past fifteen years,” said Godall.

  St. Ives shrugged. “Yes and no. He’d have done so anyway. The two of them — Keeble and Owlesby — were close as brothers, and Winnifred Keeble and Nell were inseparable since childhood.”

  “Ah, Nell,” said Godall, nodding almost imperceptibly. “Well, there it is. The men at The Blood Pudding were dead men, as I say, and I watched Narbondo through the curtain two days ago revive what was almost certainly a corpse. How Drake ties in I’m not yet sure, although it seemed to me that the two were striking some sort of bargain there — that Narbondo, perhaps, supply Drake with an army of willing workers — workers the union bosses would find unmalleable. Or, now that I listen to your story of the creature in the box, it’s entirely possible that Drake hopes to purchase that which Owlesby desired, and that he believes Narbondo can deliver it. In which case the landing of this blimp might prove interesting, if, as you say, the hunchback understands the homunculus to be aboard.”

  “He might,” said St. Ives. “But there’s no certainty of it.”

  “And there’s another party,” said Godall, “a self-styled messiah with the unlikely name of Shiloh, who has a hand in the mystery. He’s the one, by the by, who brushed you into the roadway moments before I appeared in front of Drake’s brothel.”

  “The old man!” cried St. Ives, the nature of the two empty-eyed men on the stairs and of the bloodless ear suddenly revealed. St. Ives shook his head. It was a loathsome business, but none of it precluded his being on the express next morning, bound for Harrogate. He’d be only hours out of London, in terms of clock time, and could sail back in, pistol in hand, as it were, when the call came. In figurative terms, thank heaven, Harrogate was light years’ distance from London, and such was the nature of reality that he’d traverse the miles in little over four hours, and eat cakes and tea in a room hung with star charts and bookshelves.

  “When do you return?” asked Godall suddenly, breaking in upon St. Ives’ reverie.

  “I hadn’t thought much along those lines,” the physicist admitted.

  “I rather fear for this man Kraken,” said Godall. “He struck me as being a bit mad, in truth, but harmless. He’d best be found. And I’m fairly certain that none of us are man enough to see this thing through alone. It’s collective spirit that will defeat them in the end.”

  “Of course, of course.” St. Ives’ pipe went dead. There was truth in Godall’s statement. He could, he supposed, return to London in a few days. A week, say. Five days at most. Three. But fixing a date rather kicked the daylights out of his cakes and tea. “If anything develops,” St. Ives heard himself saying, “send for me straightaway and I’ll be on the next train. If I don’t hear from you before, I’ll see you next Thursday evening at the shop. These meetings should become a bit more regular, at least until after the appearance of Birdlip.”

  “Agreed,” said Godall, who thrust out his hand, then hunched out into the slackening rain, striding away toward Soho, the words “Good luck” sailing back over his shoulder on the breeze. St. Ives set out down Regent, hunkering into his coat, wondering how it was that Godall seemed so damned efficient, how he wore so well his mantle of intrigue and mystery.

  The lights of the Captain’s shop glowed far behind them now through the rain, and just visible in the dimly lit room was the Captain himself, unmoving. The Captain’s mind was empty, the dust beaten out of it by this sudden enormity. What would he say to her? To Jack? If he found Kraken… he didn’t know what he would do. It was his own damned fault, waving the box around with Kraken supposedly unconscious in an adjacent room. Suddenly he stiffened. It wasn’t just the box, after all, that had been waved around. He checked his pocket watch. Quarter past two. Three o’clock would tell the tale.

  The hands crept round, the Captain regarding, then casting away, plan after plan. At five until three, he listened for the knock at the door. He paced from room to room, dimming lights, watching through windows. No one came. The streets were silent but for the patter of rain. Perhaps she’d forgotten, was asleep. Four o’clock passed, five. At ten next morning, when a customer rapped at the mysteriously locked door of the shop, he awakened Captain Powers, who leaped up with a shout from a dream involving dark London alleys and stooped criminals. He couldn’t face the day alone; it was time to take Godall completely into his confidence.

  EIGHT

  AT THE OCEANARIUM

  At the same time that St. Ives was reading Owlesby’s manuscript to the horrified members of the Trismegistus Club at Captain Powers’ shop, Dr. Ignacio Narbondo and Willis Pule were driving along Bayswater Road toward Craven Hill. The sky was a confusion of whirling clouds, and there was no moon to brighten the road, which was still dry despite little flurries of raindrops that swept along now and then, causing the two men to yank the collars of their coats tighter around their necks. The dome of the oceanarium lay like the shadow of a humped beast through the oaks, the broad branches of which shaded the road and adjacent park into utter obscurity.

  The hunchback reined the horse in some twenty yards from the darkened building, keeping well back into black forest shadows. Nothing stirred but the sighing wind and the occasional patter of drops. The stone block of the oceanarium was gray with age and stained brown in long vertical streaks from the rusting iron sashes of banks of windows. Vines crept up along the wall, trimmed around windows and just beginning to leaf out in the late April spring. No lights shone from within, but the two men knew that somewhere a groundskeeper kept watch, poking around, perhaps, with a lit candle. Pule hoped the man was asleep, and his dog with him. He crept along the edge of the building, below the windows, listening and watching and trying each window in turn, ready to cut and run at the least sound.

  He grasped the stile of a broad double casement and pulled, the window creaking suddenly open in a little spray of rust chips. Pule hauled himself up, scrabbling for a toe-hold against the stones and scraping the skin from his palms against the rough sill. He fell back onto the ground, cursing under his breath the night, the windows, the invisible watchman and his dog, and especially Dr. Narbondo, comfortably seated on the dogcart, ready to flee at the sound of trouble. Pule knew, though, that he’d be loath to leave without the carp, that Joanna Southcote would become nothing but a decomposed heap of dust and bone without the fish — that her doddering son wouldn’t be half so anxious to part with his bag of half crowns if their attempt were a failure.

  Pule struggled once again at the window — physical strength had never been his forte. He loathed it, in fact. It was beneath him. All of this intrigue was beneath him. Soon, though, when certain things were in his possession… He found himself teetering across the sill, flailing his legs to keep from tumbling back into the night. He tipped head foremost, finally, int
o the building. His coat caught on the hinge of the casement, yanking him sideways. Debris clattered from his pocket onto the stone floor, and he cursed as he saw dimly his half candle roll under the iron legs of an aquarium. Moments later he was on his hands and knees on the damp floor groping for it.

  The air was heavy with the musty smell of aquaria and water weeds and the salt that crusted glass lids from the fine spray of aerating bubbles. Pule could hear the echoing drip of leaking tanks and the swish of bubbles on the otherwise still surface water. Thank God his matches hadn’t fallen into any puddles. He crouched behind a vast, rectangular stone monolith that supported a bank of dark aquaria, and he struck a match against the rough granite in a hiss of igniting sulphur. He lit the piece of candle, shoving it securely into a brass candlestick.

  He peered out into the dark room, satisfied that he was alone, then rose and stepped across toward the opposite wall.

  He’d strolled about that same room a half-dozen times in the last month, familiarizing himself with the islands of aquaria, with the position and nature of closets of nets and siphons and buckets and the great rubber bladders that fed air into the tanks. He found a broad, square net and a step stool, and hauled them both back to the center of the room. He waved his candle at a long, low tank, squinting through the glare off the glass, and watching the silver bulk of the great carp that lay barely moving among the rocks and weed.

  Pule stepped to the top of the stool. He pulled the glass top from the tank, then climbed down and laid it carefully onto the floor. In a moment he was up again, dipping his net into the aquarium. He’d have to be quick. If the carp were given half a chance, they’d sail to the far end of the tank and hover there, and he’d have to move the stool to get at them. That wouldn’t do. He carefully yanked out clumps of weed, dropping them with a wet splat to the floor. There was no use tangling his net in them. It was a carp he wanted, not a mess of greenery. Through the dim water he could see one resting on the gravel, a mottled koi some foot and a half in length. That would suffice. Pule eased the net into the water, wiggled it to unfurl the corners, and with a sudden lunge, swept it down and over the tail of the sleeping fish, yanking it out of the water before it had a chance to awaken. He groped for its head, trying to hook a finger under a gill. Water splashed out of the aquarium, drowning the front of his coat.